Search For Housing Site Faces Delays

Officials Demand Campaign Before Locales Are Reviewed

BRISTOL — The search for a new home for a controversial downtown housing project bogged down Friday amid calls for a broader campaign to educate the public before a review of specific sites begins.

The second meeting of a multitown task force, which convened two weeks ago to consider alternatives to placing a 39-unit apartment house for the poor and disabled in downtown, highlighted more conflicts than solutions.

Thomas Morrow, executive director of the Bristol Community Organization, said the scattered-site housing favored by residents would be too costly. BCO, the project's sponsor, favors placing people in a single building.

Some committee members said they thought the original project site, the Funck building on Prospect Street, had been ruled out when it hadn't.

And when Morrow said he planned to scour local towns for other sites, Plainville Town Manager John Bohenko said elected leaders would have to be educated about the project first to avoid a public relations nightmare.

``We're just asking for trouble,'' Bohenko said.

A plan to create an apartment house for people at risk of homelessness by renovating the Funck building on Prospect Street sparked stiff opposition from residents in the Federal Hill area, the mayor and the city council. Critics fear the project will slow the revival of downtown.

To try to salvage the housing project, part of a statewide strategy to curb homelessness, a task force was formed last month at the request of Bristol Mayor Frank N. Nicastro Sr. to find another site within the five towns that BCO serves -- Bristol, Plymouth, Plainville, Burlington and Farmington.

Given Bohenko's request that BCO first educate communities about the project before searching for sites, Morrow said he probably wouldn't make the Sept. 1 deadline for finding locales outside of Bristol.

State Rep. Elizabeth Boukus, D-Plainville, said she would be ``very disappointed if underlying all of this was Funck as a fallback position.''

When Morrow said the search was supposed to be undertaken with Funck as a possibility if no other sites are deemed adequate, Nicastro reiterated his opposition to the Funck building.

Other signs that the project faces an uphill battle in Bristol cropped up during the meeting.

Morrow said he would consider scattered-site housing as an option if he could be assured the state would provide funding for such a project. But Susan Shimelman, undersecretary of the Office of Policy and Management, said the hunt for state money ``was a competitive process to begin with and continues to be a competitive process. That's all I can say.''

After a lengthy presentation on the success of similar housing projects and their support within host communities, Nicastro said, ``For everything positive that's said, there's something negative that will be said. Let's be honest about it. Let's be in the real world.''

Tyrone Mellon, representing Federal Hill residents who have fought the Funck building site, told Morrow that dismissing scattered-site housing as too costly ``is not going to make this more palatable to the community as a whole.''